The Paradox of Gustatory Taste

Abstract

In this paper I introduce and solve a puzzle that arises at the intersection of aesthetics and linguistics: the "Paradox of Gustatory taste." the puzzle essentially involves explaining how taste disagreements can be both subjective and objective-a seemingly paradoxical task. the puzzle has its roots in linguistically based observations about taste disagreements, and has important implications not only for aesthetics but for philosophy of language as well. I claim the paradox can be resolved, without reference to a semantic theory, by appealing to a theory of gustatory value. to demonstrate this point, I develop such a theory, which I model on a Humean approach to aesthetic value presented by Peter Railton. I argue this theory can fully resolve the paradox of taste and has the benefit of remaining neutral with regard to the semantics of predicates of personal taste. If I am correct, this discovery represents a substantial contribution to the dialectic because it offers philosophers and linguists substantial motivation to diminish their reliance on disagreement data in the debate about the semantics of taste.

Connoisseurial Contradictions: Expertise modulates faultless disagreement

“…We could take a more sophisticated view of epistemic justification: for example, assertions of taste claims have been analyzed as proposing to coordinate on a judgment shared by all interlocutors (e.g. Stephenson 2007;Furey 2017;Coppock 2018;Rudin & Beltrama 2019). Though a speaker may be epistemically justified in their belief in the truth of the sentence-as-evaluated-by-themself, they are not necessarily thereby epistemically justified in their belief in the truth of the sentence-as-evaluated-by-all-interlocutors, which is what they have proposed to coordinate on.…”